Credits

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

I just got back from casting my Super Tuesday primary ballot. There was no line, no wait at my polling place, though the poll workers said there had been a pretty steady stream of people. There was no presence for any candidate, but there was a fun moment when a police officer was walking with a little boy (we vote at a middle school) down the hallway in the other direction saying "Well, if you do well in school, sure you could grow up to be president. Do you like talking to people? If you're going to be a politician, you're going to have to talk to a lot of people."

It's probably too late for any endorsements to have any effect, and in all honesty, they probably wouldn't have any effect anyway, but I voted for Barack Obama. I had had a hard time picking between the candidates early on in the election cycle, but I suppose I knew that I'd eventually settle on Obama. Other people have made the case for him better than I could, so I'll just say that in the end, it's because I'm still a Deval Patrick supporter. Because of Deval I went from someone who follows politics to someone who is involved in politics. My hope is that through the Obama campaign, thousands of other people across the country like me will have that switch turned on and become active. I will happily vote for Senator Clinton in the general should she win the nomination, after all the differences in policy between the candidates are so minute, but I don't think that she has the ability to be a transformative force in American politics -- if only because we've seen what a Clinton administration looks like already.

Plus, as an added bonus, I'd like to think that I'm canceling out Sal DiMasi's vote.

There are two other races on the ballot here in Watertown. The Democratic State Committee holds its elections at the same time as the the Presidential election, and in the Second Suffolk & Middlesex state senate district, the Democratic State Committeewoman seat is open. I wrote in our state Representative, Rachel Kaprielian for that position. She currently holds that seat, but due to the change in date for the primary missed the deadline to get her name on theballot. Rachel has been active on the State Committee and I think it's important that we don't lose her progressive voice setting the direction of the Democratic party.

In addition, 35 members of the Watertown Democratic Town committee are up for reelection. I'm a member of the slate of candidates and we're running unopposed. My dream is that I'll get more votes in Watertown than Mitt Romney, but my guess is that most people who pull a Democratic ballot will end up skipping the right side of the ballot (I know I did in 2004).

Update from Mrs. sco at the home front:

The Clinton campaign has been calling every five minutes. Finally Ipicked up and said we already voted. They asked if we voted for Hillary and I said I didn't know who you voted for. I don't know why. I mean, we've made those calls. I guess I just didn't feel like telling her anything useful because I was annoyed at all the calls.

Friday, February 01, 2008

Three years ago today, I made my first post to this blog, which detailed how Mitt Romney's Commonwealth PAC was dumping money into early primary states. As of now, all he has to show in the states he worked so hard in is a single win in his birth state of Michigan. He may yet win the GOP nomination, but that's a pretty poor track record for over three years of campaign work.

The blog has undergone a few cosmetic changes as well. I've added categories to every post and now have a sidebar with some more dynamic content. Still, I've noticed that this year I had fewer posts where I was able to do the kind of detailed analysis that I had done on issues in previous years and once again I failed to blog about my experiences working on a local campaign.

If anyone is still reading the blog, here are some of my favorite posts from the past year: